The second part of our talk with Ivan is suddenly much shorter compared to our standard episodes. But I'm sure it will be interesting to watch anyway! Our guest shows his tabletop press here and shows many of his prints.
In the previous episodes, we only had one guest not with a bookish profession but with a bookish hobby. Ivan Gulkov will be the second of our guests of that type. He's a hobbyist printer and in the first part of our talk with him, we discussed the history of printing and what it is to be a hobbyist printer in the modern world and how it all started in the late 19th century.
We discuss two objects from my collection. This book and... something else. Both of them have something in common: after I got them, I searched the internet and found them being sold on auctions in the previous years.
Often you can hear from a bookbinder or any other book artisan that they have a small workshop and what are the pros and cons of having a small working space. Well, here's a 1.5 square meter printing house.
To give our community more opportunities to learn something about book arts and book history, we decided to open the part of our digitized collection that before was shared only with our patrons.
This vintage Russian magazine about printing was published for only two years, but it already gave me a lot of insights into the epoch. This time we share the second issue of the first year of publishing: December 1901.
Check these amazing initials that book restorer Eliane Gomes from Nautilus Boekbinderij found in a Bible that was printed in 1690 in the Hague. Interestingly printers seemingly didn't have a matching initial "V"!
This vintage Russian magazine about printing was published for only two years, but it already gave me a lot of insights into the epoch — this time we share the first volume that was published in November 1901.
Just a couple of weeks ago I saw a post from Simon Beattie about an 18th-century Russian book with "marbled" endpapers that were in reality hand-printed. Imagine my surprise when I found something similar just a few days later!
There are under 50 complete or mostly complete Gutenberg Bibles known to exist today. One of them was a part of William H. Scheide library, that was donated to Princeton in 2015. And it is one of only three books remaining in the original binding.
Reading old trade magazines is always the right way to get knowledge and inspiration. Like with this 1911 issue of the Dutch Printer's Yearbook, where I found mentions of "starch marbling." This issue of the Russian magazine Art of Print isn't an exception.
The 32nd Moscow International Book Fair just ended. One of the topmost attractions there was a Skaryna Bible printing experience. A crowd gathered around the booth of the Republic of Belarus to see how books were printed and take part in the process.
Today we uploaded the final digitized volume of the Dutch Printer's Yearbook series. There were four books in total, starting with the 1906 edition. And the last volume is as interesting as the previous three!
Found this beautiful selection of decorated initials while browsing a volume of the Studio - an old magazine about fine and applied arts.
In our age of abundant visuals, it is easy to look at 18th-century Romantic poet William Blake’s illuminated books without realizing just how revolutionary and ingenious they were.
